


Dreams of Gold

by BDBriggs



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Gen, it's got ryan haywood in it so if you're new don't read it but if you want to reminisce it's here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22021114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BDBriggs/pseuds/BDBriggs
Summary: IMPORTANT:I wrote this before Ryan’s ugly parting from the company. I don’t condone what he’s done, at all, whatsoever, but I don’t want to erase the works I’ve created because of his poor choices. Please avoid this if you don't want to read anything with him in it.***They call him the Mad King, as if he were angry or insane. He was shaped by grief, however, and this grief drives him to violence in this life and the next. He dreams of fire and blood, of gold just beyond his fingertips, of light he cannot see.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 44





	Dreams of Gold

For all that Ryan likes to play the part of the mad psychopath, death hurts a lot more than he lets on. Having been killed countless times over the centuries he’s been alive, dying doesn’t phase him anymore. But this?

This is different.

The world is burning. Flames tear at Ryan’s clothes, smoke stings his eyes and sticks in his throat. His lungs burn from the smoke, his skin burns from the heat, and his heart burns from the loss he knows he’s about to endure.

_”Gavin!”_ He screams, trying not to retch from the smoke. Gavin’s body lies crumpled at the bottom of the wall. Ryan’s death had been certain from the moment the walls were stormed, sure, but his world hadn’t truly shattered until Gavin was struck down. An arrow pierced through his chestplate, and while Ryan hadn’t seen it happen, he’d certainly seen his limp form fall from the wall and land in a crumpled heap. The flames are less intense outside; Ryan runs as best he’s able to the bleeding, broken figure at the base of the wall.

“Gavin,” he cries, collapsing to his knees. “Please, _please_, just hold on.” He gathers the limp form in his arms and fumbles, trying to find a pulse with shaking hands.

He gets a weak cough for his trouble. Gavin’s pale, and there’s blood _everywhere_; it’s clear he’s not going to make it. Ryan curses ever deity he can think of for taking _Gavin_ instead of _him_. He’d do anything to reverse their places, so that Gavin could survive long enough to bother him for a few more years.

“Hate being betrayed,” Gavin gasps out, trying to manage words despite the blood flowing from his wound. “Hate feeling like _bait_ up there on the wall.” He coughs wetly, the smoke probably doing his ruined lungs no favors, “wish I’d been with you.”

Ryan holds him tightly. They’d been betrayed by their supposed ally, and it was fucking terrible. There would be few survivors here, if any. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, “I wish I could have traded with you. If it were up to me, I’d never let you feel unsafe again, never let you be used as bait up there on the wall.”

Gavin laughs, or coughs with a touch of humor behind it. “I—‘m going to be safe, where I’m going,” he reassures, ever positive, even in the face of death. “Don’t worry. Don’t grieve.”

It’s not a promise Ryan can make. Even a thousand years in the future, he will mourn the brief friendship he’d been given. But he can’t say that, not when Gavin’s time is so short. “Shh,” he says instead. “I will always remember you.”

The smile Gavin gives him is a soft, broken thing. His teeth are stained with blood, his eyes sparkling in agony. A heartbeat, two, and then he’s gone, going limp in Ryan’s arms. Ryan cradles him close for a moment, ignoring the blood, the flames, the smoke. Shouts and footsteps draw his attention, though, and he draws the blade Gavin kept on his hip. Ryan’s body may be ruined by fire and smoke, but it will still fight. He cannot protect Gavin any longer, but he can _damn well _make his killers pay.

Guardsman Ryan falls in the ruined courtyard, his body slain by the encroaching army and then swallowed by flame. Years pass. King Ryan comes later. But King Ryan falls, and betrayal never ceases to sting, never fails to remind him of a fallen archer cradled in his arms. The betrayal doesn’t shape him, exactly; the _grief_ does, and Mad King Ryan ascends. Never again will he be betrayed; no, this time, _he _betrays his fellows first. The Mad King spares no one, despite the fact his enemies rise time and time again. Their struggle is eternal. Empires rise and fall, and still they quarrel and fight and slaughter.

He's caught eventually. All good things must come to an end. He is not killed for his crimes; a ritual, a prayer, and his prison becomes the void. The Mad King was never angry or insane as his name might imply, merely grieving, but in endless darkness he becomes acquainted with madness. Even his voice is swallowed by the void. The darkness is so all-encompassing that he yearns for light. He forgets colors, but he dreams of gold.

Ryan does not expect to awaken. After an eternity of nothing, he becomes aware of _something_. Black is the first thing he sees; the night sky above him, barely any stars left in the sky. At first he thinks he must have been gone so long that the stars have burnt out. He lays there for a long time, lost and confused. His sentence was never supposed to end, so why is he here? When the sky lightens to dark blue—beautiful, _glorious_ blue—he picks himself up out of the ruins of a burnt building and sets to work reclaiming what he lost.

Death is his friend once more. Murder is considerably harder to get away with in this new world, but he makes do. He shrouds himself in blue and black, relearns how to lie and cheat and kill, skills that had once been second nature to him. Decades go by, and he moves. He learns. He keeps to himself this time; no fellows to betray, no fellows to be betrayed by. It’s easier this way. He moves every few years, aimless, drifting; a vagabond. It suits him better than castles and grand halls.

It isn’t until he reaches the city of saints that he remembers his dreams of gold. He’s halfway through stealing an attack chopper when a gold titan flies down the runway behind him, taking off into the sunset. The abundance of gold hues in the sky makes him freeze. He wants to follow the gold plane, to keep sight of it as long as he can, but his fingers have become clumsy and refuse to respond. So he watches, instead, as the gold plane flies into the distance, becoming a speck in the steadily darkening sky.

Ryan learns later that the plane crashed shortly after, missiles killing the lone pilot. He mourns—not the person he didn’t know, but the plane, the color gold. He dreams of fire, of a broken smile and warm blood spilling over his arms, and he mourns.

Violence is his answer, predictably. He amasses wealth from jobs, from murdered targets, from stolen goods. The city of saints draws him in and he stays, longer than wise, even after he is killed by the ever-vigilant police. He attracts attention.

He finds gold.

It starts with a business card. A pretty white thing, left underneath the door to one of his lesser-used safehouses, words written in flowing golden script. It’s an arrangement for a meeting. Ryan arrives at the location under the cover of night, shrouded in blue and black, face painted red, black, and white. The man he meets is insignificant, a lesser nobody sent on an errand, but the job he gives Ryan is important. _They sold us out_, the man says, and the words echo in Ryan’s head for days.

Ryan is calm. He gathers ammo, packs his gear, and heads for the target’s location. He brings a hefty amount of explosives and levels the compound in a night. The gang does not escape alive. _They sold us out_. The sting of betrayal still cuts deep, but Ryan can do something this time. He can fix it.

The missions keep coming, and the guiding hand behind them is wise. Ryan never meets them, but he appreciates the cleverness, the careful manipulations of situations to keep the Vagabond on their side. The missions he receives all have a common thread. _They sold us out. They betrayed us. We were double crossed. _Ryan takes out his opponents mercilessly. Void take those who would use people for personal gain and turn on them the moment that gain could no longer be furthered. It makes his blood boil.

Something brews in the dark of Los Santos. A storm on the horizon churning the waves, darkening the sky, threatening rain. Ryan feels it in the air. The missions become less frequent and then disappear entirely. He misses them, but he knows death is impartial. It comes for everyone. Clearly his guiding light had no shortage of enemies; otherwise, he would have had no use for the Vagabond. Ryan mourns, but he moves on.

Preparing for the growing storm keeps his attention. Someone in the city is preparing for war. Ryan amasses weapons and ammo, stocks his safehouses, and withdraws into his den. He has survived wars a thousand times over; this storm will pass, he knows. If he must die and start again elsewhere, he will. He’s done it countless times before.

Ryan’s out in the desert, watching the stars, when he sees the gold titan again. At first he thinks it’s a trick of the light, but he sees it fly in to the little airport by the lake, the gold plating unmistakable. And before he knows it, he’s running. His lungs burn from lack of oxygen, his legs burn from the strain of running, and his heart burns at the sight of gold. He skids to a stop, gasping and panting, just in time for the engines to rumble to a stop. The door opens. Ryan knows he must look dark and menacing, wrapped in blue and black and painted red, black, and white.

The man he comes up against, in contrast, is blinding in his brilliance. He wears dark blue, just like Ryan does, but on a tightly fitting dress shirt and skinny jeans, instead of leather and kevlar. His sunglasses are gold, the pistol in his hand is gold, his _hair_ is gold. And this boy, this golden boy, is everything Ryan has ever dreamed of encompassed in one person. He smiles, then, this tired quirk of lips, and Ryan’s heart leaps into his throat. He tastes smoke, feels blood on his hands, feels the weight of a crumpled body in his arms.

“I hate being betrayed,” the golden boy says quietly. “Hate being used as _bait_. They think I’m shiny and pretty and incapable of fighting back, especially in that plane.” He juts his chin out defiantly. “They’re wrong.”

Ryan might have stayed there, frozen to the spot for eternity, if not for those words. “If it were up to me,” he says, equally quiet, “you would never be used as bait up there again.”

The golden boy grins at him, then, sharp and brilliant and smug. He grins back, feral and malicious and dangerous.

They get along as well as they did millennia ago, close friends and confidants. Gavin tells him of the deaths he’s had since coming to the city; so often playing the role of bait a little too well, his team leaving him behind more often than not. He admits he hates dying alone, wishes he had someone to comfort him through his misery. He describes dreams of longing for the soft embrace of darkness. Ryan, in turn, tells him of dreams of gold.

Planning is quick. They hardly need words. In his long life, Ryan has only ever seen immortals fight. He’s seen empires rise and fall under immortal hands, and not once has he seen two immortals work together. Gavin says they did, in recent history, before they started using him as bait and leaving him to die when things got ugly. Ryan sees red. That’s not _working together_, and both of them know it.

_This_ is working together.

War begins when the fake kings of the city of saints find their pretty golden boy is missing, his golden plane burning in the middle of the desert. The scene is swarmed by nightfall. All evidence points to the malicious Vagabond. There’s no point in drawing it out, in waiting for them to find him. Ryan walks into the den of his former fellows the next evening with nothing but the clothes on his back. 

They’re surprised. For one, they didn’t know he’d escaped his sentence. Ryan’s not entirely sure he has, faced with so many horribly familiar faces at once. Geoff looks older, more grim. His cheeks have lost their roundness. Michael’s hair is shorter than Ryan remembers, but that lightning-fast tongue is just as quick to lash him as it used to be. Ray no longer sits on the throne of the city of saints; another has taken his place. Ryan isn’t sure what to make of the man in garish colors and a cowboy hat, but he condemns him all the same. Jack, the ever-shifting, has chosen a female form this time around. She is beautiful and dangerous and Ryan respects her the most of them all for the way she holds a gun to his head without hesitation.

And it’s amazing, the words they hurl at him. Ryan smiles behind his mask, amused by the insults and threats they spit. How dare he come to their city! How dare he hurt their golden boy!

“Indeed,” he says, finally, when their words have quieted. “How dare I shoot down the golden plane you’ve used as bait, time and time again?” He grins, sharp and malicious. “How dare you leave him behind. How dare you leave him to _die alone_.”

“You never cared enough to go back for _us_ when _we_ were dying, back then,” Geoff spits, “and yet you have the gall to blame us?”

Ryan stiffens. “I did go back,” he says, quietly, hands curling into fists. The words surprise them. _Good_. “I saw him fall from the wall.”

What wall, they ask? There was no wall when Gavin died the last few times; only a golden plane and flames, so many flames. The mad king, insane, his time in the void ruined his mind, they whisper.

“An arrow pierced his heart,” Ryan says, smiling when they freeze. Arrows haven’t been used in combat for hundreds of years, not since a time when he wandered the void, or before. They are old enough to know this. “I held him as he died. He was hurt more by the betrayal of our ally than by the arrow in his chest.” He gazes out the window, admiring the light of the stars. A signal. “I wonder,” he continues, “if this sting of betrayal will hurt _you_ more than the bullets.”

Jack falls, the crack of a rifle echoing moments later. Michael is next. Several others fall, new blood of the fake kings that Ryan doesn’t recognize. The sniper echoes in the otherwise quiet night. Ryan stalks forward, rips his mask off, and grins at Geoff. “I could not protect Gavin, all those years ago,” he says. “The grief drove me to madness, to violence. But he learned. Now, he can protect himself.” One last shot cracks, and Geoff crumples to a heap at Ryan’s feet, blood pooling in a halo around his head. Ryan wonders if the city of saints was named for them, or if they were drawn to the city for its name. He supposes it doesn’t matter, now.

Ryan turns on his heel and leaves. His car isn’t far. The golden sniper on a far-off rooftop hits the charges they’d placed together, earlier. The building is leveled, all evidence of the fake kings erased. They will return, Ryan knows, but that is a matter for another time. He drives to the building where Gavin hid himself, and then he drives them to the airport in the city. A gold bombushka waits in the hangar for them, all pretty and new, paid for by the riches of the fake kings. Ryan parks his beloved car in the back and follows Gavin up the ramp, into the plane.

Their time in the city of saints is at an end. The Golden Boy and the Vagabond fly away after sunset, their plane’s golden luster dampened by the dark shroud of night.


End file.
